Great art must move you! It must propel the viewer with the utmost of efficiency, surpassing even the mighty salmon.* It should possess enough footholds to engage the meek, yet savagely shake the seasoned gallery goer into hanging on for dear life! Why sculpt the fleshy buttocks when the sumptuous bicycle seat beckons? Why dally in life model rendering when the stout bicycle fork poses confidently? And why - for art’s sake - capture in pigment the sun’s dying rays, when the bicycle reflector glows brilliantly at dusk? Thus, in 1988, I publicly declared my chosen medium henceforth to be The Bicycle! And, with the artwork in front of you as my witness, I accepted the honorary title: Luminary Dean of the Bicycle Artist Pantheon. (OK, so it’s a Hollywood manifesto...)
The Illuminated Bike Path
* “When one compares the energy consumed in moving a certain distance as a function of body weight for a variety of animals and machines, one finds that an unaided walking man does fairly well (consuming about 0.75 calories per gram per kilometer), but he is not as efficient as a horse, a salmon or a jet transport. With the aid of a bicycle, however, the man's energy consumption for a given distance is reduced to about a fifth (roughly 0.15 calorie per gram per kilometer). Therefore, apart from increasing his unaided speed by a factor of three or four, the cyclist improves his efficiency rating to number one among moving creatures and machines." -- Stuart S. Wilson, Scientific American (Mar. 1973)